damage control: The city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, hometown of Nets forward Mirza Teletovic, was bombed constantly during the Bosnian War, leaving ruins throughout the town. Photo: AP

(REUTERS)

Brooklyn and the Nets were just starting their honeymoon. At Barclays Center, lights flashed and flickered. Music by a noted

small share owner and his enormously famous celebrity wife blared. “Broooklynnn” chants cascaded through the arena. Then a shrieking, siren-like whistling split the night.

Mirza Teletovic froze. The 6-foot-9

Nets forward had heard that exact sound so many times as a child. It was a warning sound. It meant the bombs were coming.

“There were ground bombing alarms and aviation alarms for bombs from planes. In our country, when everybody hears it, everybody keeps quiet for a minute,” Teletovic explained of his native Bosnia and Herzegovina. “I heard it in games here, a screeching whistle. It reminds you of the war.”

Despite a childhood plunked in the middle of the Bosnian War after Yugoslavia’s collapse, despite the crippling loss of friends and relatives, Teletovic maintains a stunningly positive approach to life, family, basketball. One of Europe’s biggest basketball stars, his first foray

into the NBA has not found the success many predicted. Teletovic, who opted for the infrequent path of buying out his European contract for a healthy sum of nearly $2 million, shrugs. He says he will be back and he will make it. So do others.

“I saw how he worked, shot, how athletic he is. Definitely he is an NBA player,” said Knicks guard Pablo Prigioni, who spent four years with Teletovic in Spain. “He does many things but needs time to show that. He needs confidence on the court. His coach [P.J. Carlesimo] needs to trust he can do it, push him to do it. He needs time to adjust to the NBA.”

Teletovic scoffs when people say he blew his chance with an underwhelming performance during a 14-game stretch from Feb. 20-March 20 (averaging 14 minutes, shooting 40.6 percent).

“I’m not going to give up on NBA. That’s for sure,” Teletovic said. “They ask me, ‘Do you want to go back to Europe?’ No, I’ve done everything there. This is my next challenge. I have two more years on my contract. I like Brooklyn. I would like to stay here.”

After what he has been through, no challenge seems too great.

TELETOVIC was born in 1985 in Mostar, raised in Jablanica. Mostar sustained some of the worst fighting in the Bosnian War, which raged from March 1992 to December 1995. Though Jablanica was spared the utter devastation that befell Mostar, roughly 32 miles south, it suffered daily shellings.

“My house got bombed. We rebuilt the house four years ago. The right side of the house was totally damaged. There were holes like this,” Teletovic said, forming a giant “O” with both hands. “It was like that from the grenades from tanks and artillery.”

In the U.S., kids count how many makes of cars pass in a set time. In Jablanica, routinely shelled from an overlooking hilltop, the counting games were vastly different.

“My older cousin loved to count how many bombs used to fall,” Teletovic recalled. “He would count 100, 115 grenades in five, six hours. The next day, same thing. That’s how it would go for four, five months.”

Daily, the tally usually grew.

“I was in Mostar during the war. It was brutal there. The west side of Mostar was Croatian and the rest was Bosniak [Teletovic’s nationality],” said David L. Phillips, director of the program on Peace-Building and Rights at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, and also a pro bono political advisor to the presidency of Bosnia during the war.

“It was people just shooting at each other across one building to the next. The level of devastation was unbelievable,” Phillips said. “In Jablanica, there were camps … set up by the HV, the Croatian-Bosnian army, where Muslims were interned and a lot of atrocities were committed.”

Amid the horror and devastation, kids such as Teletovic found an outlet: basketball. Phillips painted a poignant picture of one wartime scene spotted on a drive from the Sarajevo airport, “the scene of brutal fighting.”

To get to Sarajevo from the airport, Phillips said, the trip eventually wove through a “devastated Bozniak community”

where busses were piled up for shelter from sniper fire. Everywhere, buildings revealed undeniable effects of war.

“I’m driving by one of these buildings. Three of the walls are in various stages of collapse from artillery shells. But on the fourth wall which is intact, there’s a brand new basketball hoop and net,” Phillips said. “That took on such symbolism, because in the middle of this devastation and conflict, somebody thought to hang the basketball net to try to continue a kind of normalcy in life. For Yugoslavs, basketball was an extremely important activity.”

It’s far more than a sport or game. Just ask Teletovic.

“Basketball is a great pressure reliever,” he said. “It’s enjoyment where I feel comfortable, where I feel home, where I feel in my zone. Like a kid. A lot of my friends played basketball. We liked to get together and just …”

Escape reality, if only for a few minutes a day.

See why he won’t quit on the NBA? Teletovic and others believe in him. At the trading deadline, the Nets received more calls about him than any player, in large part because of his manageable salary ($3.09 million this year, $6.6 mil for two more).

“He was one of the best players in Europe,” an opposing team executive said. “He has a dimension teams want, a 6-9 guy who spreads the floor.”

Teletovic collected all the prestigious European hardware, including Spanish League Rookie of the Year, All-Europe Power Forward of the Year, Euroleague scoring champ. He knows he can do it.

“It’s very difficult. You have to have a lot of patience, know your goal. Playing, not playing, not having consecutive minutes — it’s hard,” Teletovic said, then laughed, “I’m starting to get white hair.”

But there are no regrets among those white hairs.

“I don’t regret coming here,” Teletovic said. “I love challenges. I tried to be a role player, but being a role player is very new. What was it, five games I played where I had [more than 20] minutes?”

Four games, but who’s counting?

“People talk, ‘Oh you got a chance…’ ” Teletovic said. “I don’t feel that. I feel like I never got a real chance to play a [whole] game. I’m not just a shooter, I’m a scorer. That’s a big, big difference. There has to be a rethinking of that description, ‘3-point shooter.’ Delete it. That’s not me. And I’m not a ‘small forward.’ All my life I’ve played power forward.”

All stuff for next season.

The Stari Most — literally translated, the “Old Bridge” — was a magnificent landmark over the River Neretva built by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. Think Eiffel Tower for a Frenchman, Statue of Liberty for an American. It connected two sides of Mostar, a European Christian society and an Ottoman Muslim one. Two cultures, one bridge.

“It was precisely for that reason it was targeted by the Croats during the war and destroyed [in 1993],” Phillips said.

“Stari Most was rebuilt with original stones after the war, UNESCO protected now,” Teletovic said. “It reminds people of good times, of having fun. A very beautiful bridge, it was rebuilt the same way. It means a lot to people. It was a very recognizable monument for Bosnia and tradition.”

So when Teletovic speaks of the bridge, he speaks of tradition, not destruction. Or the war that was everywhere in his childhood.

“The worst was the roads were blocked and you couldn’t get food or just the normal things for living,” said Teletovic, who lost friends and relatives in the war, some he didn’t even realize were casualties.

“A lot of people you call after the war and they had just died,” Teletovic said. “The woods around where my father was born were overtaken. A lot of family members living there died.”

So enduring a rough NBA rookie season? He’ll deal with it.

“We can’t fathom or understand how he grew up,” Nets interim coach P.J. Carlesimo said. “In basketball, he’s handled everything well because he’s used to not just success but tremendous success. For a variety of reasons, he hasn’t got the playing time. He hasn’t been as successful as I think he will be in the future. He has not pouted. He’s dealt with it totally professionally.”

After what he has been through, you might think fun would be a foreign concept. Not so. His overriding childhood memory is of annual family barbecues in the home where he grew up, the home he still returns to with wife, Maja, and their two young children.

“There were a lot of enjoyable moments whenever my family would come together,” Teletovic said. “My uncle lives in Australia and he used to come during the summer. My grandfather was there, we would barbecue. Everybody would get together for two weeks and just enjoy.

“There is the saying, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ There was this famous [TV show] in Bosnia called, ‘The Crazy, the Normal and the Confused.’ And the guy says, ‘What doesn’t kill you, leaves after-scars.’

“I’m a very positive guy. A bad experience, you have to live with the scars. People say forget about it. People don’t know what war means. I learned it.

“I don’t know what will happen next year,” Teletovic said. “But there is a positive thing, a fighter thing.